Good Phytohydras!

Ben BleiweissWednesday, June 04, 2008

ello everyone, and welcome back to Building on a Budget! I'm the real Ben Bleiweiss, not some evil undead non-budget building so-and-so who left me defenseless against a horde of crazed weasels last week! How I escaped is a story of MacGyveresque proportions, and is too long to relay in this column. Let's just say that I hope my eyebrows can grow back after being nibbled off ferociously.

So I leave you for one week, and what do I find? The Rotten Tomatometer for my column...my column!... is at 100% for a deck that uses the lowest poll choices, goes so far off a budget that the ticket-total hits three digits, and barely breaks even at 50/50. Yes, you all loved this monstrosity:

Well guys and gals, let's take out the parts of this deck that just plain ol' don't work—namely, the non-budget cards, and the cards that you didn't vote for! You didn't want much tutoring or hand discard, and you did want more mana acceleration and more of a rounded "not only Sprouting Phytohydra to win" strategy. Therefore, the following cards are coming out:

This column operates on a budget of 30 tickets or less using Magic Online prices (but you already knew that, right? Hello, to my three new readers this week! Email me for a fabulous prize!) Now, this is a three-color deck, though right now black is a minor splash (Bitter Ordeal). Green is the color of mana-fixing and acceleration, so it is fortunate that we are already in this color! There are a lot of mana-fixers to choose from, but the two I want to go with in this case are Sakura-Tribe Elder, and Kodama's Reach. Why did I pick these over Llanowar Elves, or Search for Tomorrow?

First, this deck needs to get to eight mana a lot of games, so I can play Sprouting Phytohydra and Bitter Ordeal on the same turn. Second, I have spells that have , , and in their mana costs. Just adding more Green to my pool won't help me gain access to all my colors of mana, so Llanowar Elves, Wall of Roots, and Vine Trellis are out, on those accounts. Kodama's Reach both accelerates and fixes, and it does it two lands at a time. This makes it a natural for going from to Æther Flash in one turn. Sakura-Tribe Elder is preferable over Rampant Growth or Search for Tommorrow for two reasons: A) It can chump block, to buy me part of an attack phase against an aggressive deck, and B) it can be sacrificed to untap Goblin Sharpshooter in a pinch.

Goblin Sharpshooter and Sakura-Tribe Elder do not make an alternate win condition on their own. I'm not going to win with a couple of 1/1 creatures on the board, unless I have support. I need a creature that will work well with the other components of my deck—untapping the Sharpshooter, feeding off of extra Phytohydras, fuelling Bitter Ordeal, and surviving Æther Flash. What fits the bill for all of these? Greater Gargadon, that's what! This deck can certainly get an all-mana draw (with eventually twenty-two lands, six signets, and seven other mana-fixers), so the Gargadon can eat extra lands to come down early. It can eat creatures to untap the Sharpshooter, eat extra Phytohydra tokens if I don't get the full combo to deck my opponent, and combo with Bitter Ordeal to remove X cards from my opponent's library, where X is the number of permanents I choose to sacrifice.

Timing Rules Primer: When Greater Gargadon is suspended, you can sacrifice an artifact, creature, or land to remove a suspend counter from Greater Gargadon. However, removing a counter is part of the effect, not the cost. This means that until you resolve unsuspending the Gargadon, you can keep activating the "sacrifice" part of the ability (the cost), even if it is more than the number of counters you have left on the Gargadon! So, if you have five counters on the Gargadon, you can sacrifice fifteen lands to it, as long as you do not let the triggered ability that would cause you to play the Gargadon resolve.

I pair up Mogg War Marshal with Greater Gargadon, because it can remove three counters from the Gargadon—plus it is more fuel for Goblin Sharpshooter, and can chump block up to three times against attackers, making it a potent offensive and defensive creature.

Even though I'm 4-1, I've only won once with the Phytohydra combo. This is ideal for the method acting approach, but is not ideal for this being a Sprouting Phytohydra deck. The truth is, the combo requires a minimum of three cards to get going (Æther Flash, Sprouting Phytohydra, and either Goblin Sharpshooter or Bitter Ordeal), and often more (Blasting Station plus another creature). I'm not guaranteed to get a three-of, a four-of, and a six-of in from my deck in any given hand, so this deck really, really needs tutoring to work well. I know that it wasn't the most popular vote, but we're talking about a deck that needs to assemble pieces, and the need in this case is extreme.

I get a suspended Greater Gargadon on turn one, and Mogg War Marshal on turn two. Adner plays Sickening Dreams, discarding Liege of the Pit and forcing me to sacrifice my token (I allow the War Marshal itself to die naturally, so I can have the token as an attacker). I suspend a second Greater Gargadon, and he suspends Nihilith. I take the opportunity to play an Æther Flash—and Adner drops Slithering Shade, pumping it to keep the 0/1 creature alive. I take this opportunity to play a SECOND Æther Flash, and then sacrifice to get my first Gargadon into play! My 9/7 slips by the Shade, and the Nihilith falls straight from the board into the graveyard as a 4/4 that immediately takes 4 points of damage. Adner is forced to Zombify his Liege of the Pit to stay alive, but I simply sit back and wait for him to sacrifice his Shade and die by his own sword.

This is where I stopped evolving the deck—Evil Ben did a lot of testing last week, and this week I've come to one conclusion—this deck is fun to get to the point where you win, but the act of winning takes a day and a half! With multiple triggered abilities each go around (Æther Flash triggering, Phytohydra coming into play, Sharpshooter untapping, Bitter Ordeal triggering), it takes a long time (in actual time, not in turns!) to win each game, making it sort of unfun for both you and your opponent. This deck was fun to tinker around with, but sometimes it's just not as fun to play a deck as it is to come up with it, and prove that it can have a good chance to win. So with this 6-2 record (Hey, I'm not counting that 10-0 from last week—Evil Ben cheated!), I hang up the reader's choice of Sprouting Phytohydra and set my sights on someplace I haven't been in a few weeks... Standard! See you in seven!